


Worn Out Faces, Places

by Steamcraft



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen, Immortal Merlin, implied mental health issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2013-03-09
Packaged: 2017-12-04 17:47:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steamcraft/pseuds/Steamcraft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world doesn't see Merlin, and Merlin doesn't need to see the world. It's a mad world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worn Out Faces, Places

The Doctor stops abruptly, looks at the man drinking his tea at a patio table outside a commercial shop. The man is all sorts of wrong, but not alarming; his time is fixed in history. This man is a fact.  
  
No, more.  
  
This man is a legend.  
  
“Sit down, and stop staring,” Merlin says without looking up from the book he’s reading. “Its not often someone knows who I am.”  
  
He won’t skip this opportunity; he jumps in the chair opposite, mouth open. “Wow! Just, wow. Let me say it is a right honor to actually meet you, and I never really thought this day would happen!”  
  
Merlin smirks with no feeling behind it. There is years -  _lifetimes_ \- of isolation behind it and his eyes and the way he’s holding his body with a guarding and suspicious expression. “Which is your favorite? Everyone has a favorite.” His tone is condescending, feigning interest, and especially not possible to spot by someone who hadn’t lived a lonesome and straining life.  
  
The Doctor’s eyes gleam, a playful smirk pulling his lips. “I always liked a bit of humor, myself. Cuts the tragedy. Too much of it, really. I’d say The Tale of King Uther Pendragon and His Troll Queen.”  
  
That startles the immortal man to the point of dropping his cup. His magic stops the fall, and the Doctor has a feeling he’s also diverted the world’s attention away from him at that moment of casting to not make a spectacle.  
  
Merlin stares at him for a long moment before taking the handle of his cup, scooping the frozen tea from the air, and brings it to his lips in a slow drink. When he sets it back on the saucer, there’s more attention in his gaze and the hint of a real smile.  
  
“That’s an old tale, spread only by word of mouth.”  
  
“I was lucky enough to see it for myself. Not the…strange bits, but you know, bits and stuff.” The Time Lord made a face. “Should be choosing a better word than ‘bits.’”  
  
A surprised laugh. “I’d find that more in the horror genre than humorous.” He watches the Doctor for another moment. “You don’t have magic, but are definitely older than you appear.”  
  
“I also appear human,” the younger of the two states. He’s sat back, gauging Merlin’s reaction. Merlin, who understandably, only nodded; live a long while, you’ll see a few things. The Doctor will bet, however, that Merlin had never seen the stars on a personal level.  
  
“Travel a while with me.” He knows he will; the Time Lord remembers him on a planet of diamonds (he hadn’t realised it until much later, after the TARDIS picked up on the deception-like filter in the area that was cast to hide his true self, the fix).  
  
“I can’t,” is the immediate response, and Merlin bricks up his wall again, becomes secluded in his loneliness by his own choosing.  
  
The Doctor leans forward again, bubbling with an excitement at the thought of The Great Emrys aboard the TARDIS, wouldn’t she love that? “Oh, yes you can. You’re not understanding time travel: we can come right back here not even a second after you’ve left.”  
  
Merlin’s eyes narrow. “You’re not understanding a vow being kept: I intend to keep it, I’m not going with you.”  
  
“I knew a man who waited, once,” the Doctor says. “He waited 2,000 years. In hindsight it might have done him some good to step away from time to time.” He studies the immortal’s face, then says, hauntingly, “I know when the Once and Future King will return and why.”  
  
“ _Don’t you dare_ ,” Merlin seethes.  
  
“Albion’s greatest need? Albion needs you safe,” the Doctor presses on cruelly, “You may be created of magic, connected to the Earth, but tell me the Earth isn’t just the most beautifully selfish thing you’ve ever known? It will keep you starving, leave you waiting for Arthur’s return until you’ve reached breaking point. Your utter insanity will bring him back and you won’t be there to truly appreciate it.”  
  
There is an absolute wrongness to time freezing. Not just an object hovering in air, or a person’s core being altered in becoming stuck in time, but all of time and space stopping. The Vortex still, silent, the world unmoving around them. Oh how the TARDIS would be reeling in horrified rage by now.  
  
But the Doctor didn’t back down, keeping his eyes on Merlin, the sorcerer’s eyes bright with magic.  
  
“And that breaking point,” he says in a whisper, “is so far into the future, 2,000 years will be nothing—”  
  
“I wasn’t the Man in the Woods for nothing,” Merlin bites. “I’ve fought insanity before and overcome it.”  
  
“We can’t overcome insanity, Merlin,” the Doctor sympathises. “We’ve learned to embrace it to live again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Merlin obviously went with him in the end, it just up to reader how or when. I might make this a series, if I'm arsed enough to do it after Surrender.


End file.
